Image search engines sift through the web searching by type of image, by license or by tags and keywords. There are of course, standalone photo reservoirs like Flickr, Stock.xchng, Photobucket, Morguefile et.al; but your kind of image may just be tucked away in some other obscure corner of the web. Google Image Search is powerful but it always pays to have a few more options up your browser.

This is where these five image search engines come into the picture.

Cyclo.ps

In Greek mythology, it’s a giant with a single eye. As a stock photography search engine, it keeps both eyes on sites like BigStockPhoto, Flickr, Fotolia, Cutcaster, StockVault, Photos.com, ShutterStock and stockx.xchng. The search interface is typically simple and you can search by selecting specific stock photo sites or all of them in one go. A horizontal menu and also a dropdown let you view results by respective site. Clicking on the thumbnail previews takes you to the source where you can see the details attached with the photo.

Cyclo.ps gives the user a Lightbox account where he can save (by clicking the little plus icon), tag, share, and print (only the thumbnail) his selected photos. Visitors can also add comments to your shared images.

Pixsy

Type in your query and you can get what you are searching for amidst millions of images and videos. This search platform delivers both. The web app looks into the RSS feed of variety of news sites and content providers like Yahoo and extracts the image previews. Clicking on the thumbnail preview takes you directly to the source. The source webpage opens in a two frame layout with a Pixsy brief on top and the source page below. You can filter the search by content type (image or video), category and source (BBC, MSNBC, Rolling Stone, Webshots, Yahoo etc).

The site is very neat and uncluttered.

Spffy (Beta)

Ferret out the image or video you want using Spffy’s multiple searches. Spffy checks out a cross-section of sources like stock photo sites, web sources like Flickr, public domain sites and videos from YouTube. You can tune your stock search with settings for royalty-free, rights-managed and news/archival. Web search on Flickr can also be similarly configured for relevance.

Incogna

The Canada-based search engine company looks at the visual shape rather than the meta-data. This gives rather interesting results which are distinct from the others profiled here. The image search is fast though the number of results is not plentiful. You enter a keyword and then select an image from the results to do a similarity search. A moving slider to control the number of images per page is the only preference tool to set.

PicSearch

Picsearch indexes the web for images and is probably the best of the lot. The About Page of the site says that its unique search algorithm is due for a patent. The search engine has indexed more than 3,000,000,000 images. You can set a few preferences like an interface language.

Advanced search options give you several image factors like color or black and white, animation or image, portrait or landscape and more importantly the ability to search by image size. You can also use normal search operators to fine-tune your search. The site also comes with a family filter to keep out you-know-those kind of images away from the mix.

There are two things I really liked about the site. Firstly, its speed; and secondly, the Image Directory which is a vast collection of subject specific images. Oh yes, there’s a third thing to like too – it comes with a Firefox extension.

In listing these five sites, I have tried to go beyond the omnipresent searches provided by the regulars like Google, Yahoo and Bing. When it comes to search, often a single tool does the job; but there are also times when many need to be pushed into action. Along with these five, you can check out two others we have profiled before –

• PicFindr
• Everystockphoto

Do remember that although these search engines may give you the right image – using the image itself is subject to copyright. So do check the sources before you click on save. If unable to do so, what are search engines for…hunt out a few more.

Which is your image search engine of choice? Does your image search go beyond the biggies? Let us into the picture.

Image Credit: Playingwithbrushes

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Flickroom is the new Adobe AIR kid on the block that will change the way you interact with Flickr.  Flickroom lets you browse Flickr in a beautiful charcoal colored interface that is soothing to the eyes, allows easy photo uploads and downloads, gives you real-time notifications for comments and faves on your photostream, and more. The app is still in beta and new features are being added at a rapid pace.

Flickroom Setup

Download and install Flickroom from here. When launched, it will allow you to connect with your Flickr account or create a new one. The application requires a simple one-time authorization process via Flickr so that it can work with your account. Your credentials are cached locally so you don’t need to login again in the future.

Browse Flickr with Flickroom

Users of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom will feel right at home since the interface to browse Flickr is very similar. The bottom filmstrip shows your (or your contact’s) photographs. The center area is where you view photos, edit photo data, and chat with other Flickroom users.

You can choose the display size and background color of the photo viewer, and click Details to view photo information like description, comments, tags, and EXIF data.

At the top right, you can navigate between your photostream, contacts, groups, etc. The application commands are in a toolbar at the top-right of the window. From here, you can view the latest photos from your contacts, upload, chat, search and set default settings. Hover your mouse for a popup description since it may get some time to get used to the command buttons.

Viewing recent uploads from your contacts is very easy. You can see the recent photos in the right sidebar or launch a separate filmstrip view. In this separate window, you can flip between your contacts to see their recent uploads in a filmstrip.

Upload Photos

There are three ways to upload photos using Flickroom:

• When your photostream is visible, drag and drop any photo into the app to add it to your photostream.
• When viewing one of your sets, drag and drop any photo to add it to the set.
• For powerful upload functions, use the Upload Manager accessed from the top-right toolbar.

I was very impressed with the simple yet powerful Upload Manager. You can select a batch of multiple photos, choose privacy settings, use tags and existing sets, create new sets, and add to groups, before the actual upload.

Download Photos

At present, you can download only one photo that is selected and displayed. For batch downloading, do checkout the two different apps we have previously covered on MakeUseOf.

Edit Photos, Add Comments and Notes

For any photo you are viewing, the action buttons below the photo on the right allow you to edit information, make comments, add notes, mark as favorite and so on.

Search Users and Photos

Flickroom allows basic searching for photos and users at present. You can search for users by email address or username. The photo search searches tags to find matches. Though the search is basic, the best part is that you can add users as your contact from within the application.

Preferences

The application preferences allow you to set the default photo size (useful for slower connections to use smaller display size), background color, initial view, and a ‘signature’ for all new photos.

Live Feed, Chat and Tweeting

The most unique feature of this app is the ability to get real-time notifications for any activity such as comments and favorites on your photostream. You can tweet about a photo from right within the application.

If you’re in a social mood, you can jump right into the Chat room, where you can chat with other Flickroom users currently logged in.

Do you like Flickroom’s interface to browse Flickr? Does it make your photos come alive? Let us know in the comments!

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Time and time again I have to create custom icons and buttons for clients. Now with IconFinder that is a thing of the past. IconFinder is a search engine that will return icons or png files with free website icons. They allow you to change the background of each from either black, white or transparent as well as filter results for a commercial website or just for personal use.

Let’s take a look at Icon Finder:

Just like any other search engine the search bar and options are at the top. Type in a search term and hit that search button. It will then search through their 109,067 free website icons and 206 icon sets. Not too shabby for a new site.

After hitting that search button you will be shown your results. They will look like this:

Now you can click on one to download or view it but check out these features. Click on the transparent or black button under background color and watch the free website icons change to meet your requirements:

You can also narrow down your results to only show commercial images or ones you can use personally by hitting this:

Once you see the image you want to download click on it and it will bring up another screen that looks like this:

You see from this screen that you can grab the PNG file or the ICO file. It also has the dimensions – in this case it is 128×128 – a nice size for an icon. There is a link to show all icons in this set and tags/ratings.

When we click on the show all icons in this icon set button we get this:

These images are free for commercial use! WOOT! That means I do not need to pay any royalties or fees to use these in a website that makes someone money. I can’t express how awesome this is. Consider this the equivalent of Creative Commons for icons!

I ran a few other searches before I bounced, including this left arrow search:

These icons are great for small buttons designating back or forward.

The site is pretty new and I can only assume that as time goes on the site will get bigger and be filled with more and more icons. If you create icons I am sure you can get some recognition by uploading them to their site. You can browse all those sets by hitting the browse sets button.

That will take you to a page that looks like this:

You can then click on the entire set and view all of the icons in it. This is great for sticking with a static theme throughout the website.

Where do you grab your icon files from? We would love to hear about more icon download sites in the comments! Don’t be shy guys!

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However, the downside is that all those photos are going to cost you. It’s important to understand the term “royalty-free” (RF) for those websites. RF images are not in the public domain, nor are they free to use without purchasing a license.

Luckily, there are plenty of websites for copyright free photos that won’t require you to dig into your pockets.  Here’s 5 of them.

Freerange

Once you register for a free membership at Freerange, thousands of high-resolution stock photos will be at your fingertips at no cost. All of the website’s images can be used for personal or commercial projects.

For photographers, Freerange also offers Google AdSense revenue sharing when you contribute. Check out this list for more of the top websites to sell your stock photos.

Stockvault

With over 13,000 free copyright free photos, Stockvault connects designers and photographers. The photo sharing website offers all of its images for absolutely free personal or non-commercial use.

Check out more about Stockvault in MakeUseOf’s Directory.

FreeDigitalPhotos

FreeDigitalPhotos neatly organizes its thousands of photos into easy-to-find categories and sub-categories. Every image is available for free download but if you want a larger version or a high-resolution version, they’re priced at $5 and $10, respectively.

stock.xchng

SXC.hu has over 400,000 photos to choose from by more than 30,000 photographers. The website maintains that all images are free, but you must abide by its image license agreement.

Some of the site’s artists may also need to be notified about using some images, and in most cases, you’ll need to give credit to them.

Flickr

If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, you may want to actually try Flickr. The popular image hosting website has millions of images from its users who have offered their work under a Creative Commons (CC) License. All you have to do is simply pay close attention to the type of licenses each image falls under to use it appropriately.

Keep in mind that Flickr photos offered under the CC Attribution License requires you to give credit to the photographer.

Want more? MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has got details on MorgueFile, yet another website database for free high-resolution digital stock photos. If you’re still having trouble looking, try out PicFindr, a stock photography search engine.

If you know of any other good sites, let us know in the comments.

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Or do you bypass the image search for the “always in your face” Google Web search? I, for one am a habituated Flickr user; only occasionally traipsing over to Google Image Search for a look-see. And it was an error in judgment to neglect such a ready-at-hand powerful image search engine.

So, my resolution to use the web service for power searches made me go under the cowling and learn about the ways I can supercharge my image search experience.

Google Image Search operators and the Advanced Image Search options help in bringing laser sharp focus to our search. And they can be used in a variety of ways. Let’s check it out together — I’m going to list 10 ways you can use the advanced Google search to return pin-point accurate image results and will help you in so many ways.

1. Search a website for all its images

Google operators work in the same way as the web search operators. The [site:] operator can be used to find all images from a specific domain. This is handy because Google’s custom search box on websites does not include an image search option. For instance, I can type in site:makeuseof.com to get all images belonging to this website.

Maybe, you would like a copy of our Google Cheat Sheet with all the operators to become a Google ninja.

2. Search for images of a specific size

The [imagesize:] operator is quite handy if you want to locate images of certain dimensions – large or small. Used in conjunction with the [filetype:] operator it becomes a powerful tool in hunting down images of specific pixels. For instance, typing in imagesize: 580×400 returns results corresponding to the size mentioned. Using the filetype operator, like imagesize: 580×400 filetype:jpeg will filter JPEG images from the other file types.

The same results can be achieved more easily from the options in Advanced Image Search.

You can also try out an alternative interface at Imagery (it works only in Firefox).

3. Using Advanced Google Search for desktop wallpapers

The Advanced Image Search page also has a single click link which estimates your monitor resolution and returns only those images for the keywords given. For instance, a desktop size of 1280×800 and using the search term ‘landscape’, I get back nearly 700+ panoramic wallpapers.

4. Search by content

Now, we can search for a variety of content – faces, photos, line drawings, clip art, news pictures etc.

Not only that, but the results can be further filtered by color and size from the drop-down menu in the results page.

5. Search for similar images

This is an advanced Google Search feature for images that’s still being tinkered with in Google Labs. Google Similar Images, as the name suggests lets you drill further by bringing more results which resemble the main image. This experimental service works like a mirror site to Google Image Search. Only, it has a similar images link below each picture. Click that and you get more ‘lookalike’ images. Read more about it here.

6. Search random images by camera type

A wannabe photographer like me like me often wants to see photos taken by different camera makes. Of course, I can type the make of my camera and do a normal image search. Else, I can visit a site like Junknstuff to use its Google-based interface. I can select the type of camera to find images from a drop-down menu and click to get a random sampling. The results reveal interesting life tidbits and the camerawork behind it.

7. For the artist in you

If you are interested in paintings and genius of brushwork, simply type in the name of your favorite painter. Preferably, set the size to extra large or large from the dropdown. The Google images are a lesson in themselves. Try it with ‘Monet’.

8. Words in pictures

Words and their dictionary meaning are fine. But to really form our own mental lexicon, imagery really helps. Something like – dead man’s float. Use the image search to type it in and see associated images for the word. It really imprints the meaning in the mind.

9. Build your own Google Image gallery

Google Image Ripper – Clicking on the thumbnails and then downloading individual photos is a recipe for sore wrists. Using a web service like Google Image Ripper, I can bypass the thumbnails and get the full-sized images on a single page. Although bounded by server limits, the image results are still a handful. The tool is also available as a client side Greasemonkey script which gives even more results.

T.J. Mininday has covered it exhaustively in his post on Google Image Ripper – Remove Thumbnails from Image Search

WebImageGrab Light – This is billed as a 3D web search and image browser powered by Google Image Search. The free version is limited to 30 images only. Type in a keyword and the tool downloads the images in a folder.

The stand alone software is compatible with Windows and Mac OS.

10. Use only Creative Commons images

• Public Domain Images: Add &as_rights=cc_publicdomain to the URL
• Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Images: Add &as_rights=cc_sharealike to the URL
• Creative Commons Attribution Images: Add &as_rights=cc_attribute to the URL
• Google Operating System – an unofficial Google blog
• Search by Creative Commons – provides Creative Commons search services for Google, Yahoo and Flickr etc.
• Bad Neighborhood – a SEO website with a useful Google Image Search box.

Last but not the least, if you are thinking of reusing an image. Google, unlike Yahoo has so far not added a button for this very important standard among its lineup of options. Though, it is present at its backend. Creative Commons by the way is like a group of open licenses which allow creators to share their works with the world.

A search can be filtered by Creative Commons licenses by adding the following parameters to the results URL. More easily, one can use web services which utilize this parameter behind a slicker interface. Three of them can be found here. Or use an available Greasemonkey script in Firefox.

The Google Images Creative Commons script allows you to filter search results by Creative Commons copyright licenses.

Want to know more about Creative Commons? Read our previous post on 3 Tips for Getting More Out Of Creative Commons.

Yes, this was a pretty long post. It just goes to show the immense power of this Google tool which is belied by its simple interface. Let’s hope that we manage to tap into some of its power. Our image quest will be better for it.

Do you have a trick or tip which I missed? Do tip us off in the comments.

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Available as a Firefox addon and thus available for Windows, Linux and Mac Outwit is a web collection engine that lets you search for documents, images and other kinds of information online and displays the results in a very Windows Explorer like interface.

Head over to the Outwit webpage and install the Firefox addon. There are separate addons for Outwit Hub, Outwit Docs and Images. You can then access the Outwit interface via the toolbar button or the tools menu.

Consider Outwit Docs for example. Once you open it up its pretty intuitive, type what you want to search in the search box and you will see results from Internet and your local files. You can check/uncheck the type of files you want to search for. Found the file you were looking for? Great, just right click and choose to open it up or save it or whatever you would want to do with it.

You can have multiple searches going on simultaneously (reminiscent of something like Limewire) and the results would continue to increase when more such files are discovered that meet your search criteria.

Then there is a basket (strangely called the “catch”) which is like a temporary holding place for the documents (your catch) that you find interesting and would like to download later in bulk.

So much for documents, there is a lot more you can do. Outwit Images that lets you search for images in a similar fashion. Even more powerful tool however is the Outwit Hub. Where as Outwit docs and Outwit images search for documents and images respectively, Outwit Hub can be used to search for a variety of information types.

Outwit Hub is used for information extraction from webpages. Fire it up and then enter the search query or URL of a webpage. Outwit Hub will then show you different kinds of data that can be extracted from the webpage. Click on the view type on the left hand side pane and you can view the page, all the images on the page, links, email addresses, text, rss feeds found and so on. Then there are the data extraction tools which allow you to extract data from tables, lists and other data structures on the webpage.

These tools have a great potential if you are looking for data or documents of any kind. Granted, you can always copy and paste and search for them on Google but you can do so much more with tools like these. A lot more flexibility, more control and ease of use. You can for example extract the data from a table and export it as excel spreadsheet or as SQL statements in just a few clicks from within Outwit Hub.

Do you know of any such tools or extensions you use for similar purposes? Mention them in comments, we would love to hear and check them out!

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Soon after the early search days of AltaVista, Infoseek and Yahoo, Google took over. Google would not only find those same pages during the internet conception, but would essentially answer any question you want as well. Today, we still have all of that, but with Maps, News, Videos, and of course images.

Ginipic is an depth image search tool of not only your own entire image collection, but almost all of the major image hosting/sharing sites as well. This includes DeviantArt, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Google, Fotolio, Photobucket, and several others. The tool runs locally on your Windows PC and includes a very easy to use navigation tool.

First and foremost, the biggest and most important piece of Ginipic is the search portion. Having the ability to comb several image hosting sites in the matter of a few seconds makes life very easy when you’re searching for that next great photograph or graphic. The screenshot below gives you a better idea of how exactly the search works.

After finding something you’ve been searching for, you simply click on any particular image to quickly preview it before you accept your selection. From the preview window, you can share it on all of the major social networking sites, e-mail, save it, favorite it or set it as your desktop background.

The preview window is also where the drag-n-drop feature comes into play. From Ginipic you can simply select your picture from the window and drag it into any compatible image application.

Ginipic includes both a large sidebar window to search and preview, or a full screen mode. It includes windows wrapping so it never gets in the way, and when you’re done using it, you can have it continuously running in your system tray.

Ginipic is one of the first of its kind and works really well at what it’s main purpose is – meta image searching. Its incredibly fast search of not only your PC but essentially all of the web as well makes it a one of a kind of application that can come in handy in many situations for work or home.

What do you think? Do you have any similar desktop or web based image search engines that you use?im How do you see utilizing an application like Ginipic?

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How you go about this may vary. You’ll probably go to the most rock solid of options, such as Digg, RSS, Stumbleupon, or Google, but how about doing it with a completely different recommendation or suggestion engine?

inSuggest is a simple, beautiful and virtually unknown suggestion engine that can analyze manually entered websites, images or your personal Delicious bookmarks, to give you a decent plethora of website and image recommendations.

Web inSuggest

There are three different suggestion engines built into inSuggest. The first of these quick and simple engines is the website engine. After adding each of your favorite websites (up to six), the engine displays eight different websites based on your suggestions. Along with the suggestion engine, you also have the ability to quick-search websites via keyword or just browse several random sites as well.

Images inSuggest

Images inSuggest combs the web and various image sites for any pictures that relate to your personally selected choices. Although the Images section works very well, it’s limited to only images on the website. You can’t upload your own.

You do have the additional capability of searching by keyword or searching for random images, but this section definitely needs to offer the ability to upload your own images, or at least enter an image link.

Bookmark inSuggest

The bookmarks section of inSuggest is far and away the best part of the website. It only requires your Delicious username. Once you have entered your username, your bookmarks are analyzed and results are displayed on the next page.

Also on the results page is a list of a few of your most popular and few random tags throughout your various bookmarks. So by selecting a tag, you can get another completely random list of suggested sites. The username entry page additionally includes the ability to search a random user’s Delicious account as well.

After trying out inSuggest, I found that the results did a pretty good job on sites that I don’t normally visit, or haven’t even visited at all. It looks to me they are slowly working through development, because there are definitely areas it needs to expand, and I hope they do so.

Here are some suggestions on what I think they still need.

• In the website section, they need to display a longer list of results. It would be nice if the random websites tab gave you random sites, based upon your suggestions.
• The images area definitely needs to allow the ability to upload your own images. They already give you a pretty good selection of similar items, but it would be nice to have your choices. Likely the problem they have with this, is that the images are based upon tags or keywords, so this may not be possible.
• The bookmarks section really gets it a lot more right then the rest. You get a huge selection of sites to choose from and usually are pretty accurate. The one problem I see with the product is that they are typically always the exact same sites in the exact same order. If possible, it would be nice have this completely random as well.

I hope the designers continue to develop on the site, because I believe they have a solid foundation for what could be a very popular web suggestion engine.

Please try it out and throw some suggestions at the developers in the comments, because I’m sure you have some.

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The site is growing in leaps and bounds. As the tentacles of the Creative Commons organisation lengthen and curl, and its presence is felt in every corner of the web (who hasn’t read a plethora of blogs with the disclaimer ‘licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 by-nd license’, or some such) it’s time to explore how online users can get the most out of this newfangled intellectual copyright phenomenon.

1. Search for Usable Content

If you’re a blogger, musician, photographer, researcher, writer or creative person of any kind, you’ll know how annoying it is to chase up ‘permission’ to use the images, soundbytes etc. you want to include in your work. Creative Commons licenses make this easy by dividing content into categories, and allowing people to use content as long as they agree to the terms (for example,  ‘No Derivatives’ means you can use the content as long as you don’t modify it, and ‘Attribution’ means you must give credit to the original author/creator). No need to send a sycophantic email (’I LOVE this image! Can I reproduce it?’) to a photographer ever again.

Head to the Creative Commons search website and you’ll see an entry bar with two adjacent search options. Check the appropriate box and enter your search term.

Below that you’ll see a list of tabs – three familiar ones (Google, Yahoo, Flickr) and three relative obscurities (blip.tv, OWL music search and SpinXpress).

Now, this is an important thing to recognise about Creative Commons. The organisation doesn’t actually keep a comprehensive database of licensed content. There’s been a small trickle of criticism over this, because of the potential for fraud that it introduces (if I really wanted to I could apply for a license, get it, then destroy all copies of my licensed content and be free to accuse a random, innocent remix artist of nicking my stuff because no one has records of what I actually licensed in the first place) But that’s not worth going into here. So far, no earth-shattering lawsuits and CC is looking into building a database.

The point I was making is that when you do a Creative Commons search, you still need to nominate a search directory. If you nominate Google you’ll get a bunch of (hopefully) relevant articles. Interested in images? All the usual Google rules apply – you’re still able to fine tune your search by typing ‘images’ after the query term. What you’re doing is a Google search restricted to Creative Commons licensed content. The same goes for the other directories (Flickr, Yahoo, etc).

Note: Always use the top (green border) entry bar to limit search results to Creative Commons content. The lower entry bar (under the directory tabs) does not limit results – it does a standard search with Google, Yahoo, etc.

2. Learn the Jargon

When you stumble upon something fabulous you want to use, it’s important to understand what it means for something to be licensed under a ‘Creative Commons Attribution- No Derivative Works 2.5 License’, for example.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Creative Commons has four sets of license terms.

Attribution – the original author/creator must be credited.

Non-Commercial - the work must not be used for commercial purposes.

No Derivatives – the work must not be modified.

Share-alike – any derivative works must be licensed under the same Creative Commons license.

These are combined to produce the variety of CC licenses available.

Some popular combinations are by- nd (Attribution + No Derivatives) and by-sa (Attribution + Share-Alike). ‘No Derivatives’ and ‘Share-Alike’ are obviously mutually exclusive. You’ll never see these together.

Sometimes people will only use abbreviations and symbols to specify how their work is licensed, so it helps to know them.

Attribution = (by)

No Derivatives= (nd)

Non-Commercial =(nc)

Share-Alike = (sa)

3. Know the Alternative Databases (what is blip.tv anyway?)

Who can be bothered, right? That’s what we’re here for! Here is a run-down of three less common Creative Commons search databases.

blip.tv

Kind of what it sounds like. A database of user-generated video content. The focus is on content creators making ’shows’ or ’serialised content’, not posting friends, family and pet videos. This is how blip.tv has distanced itself from YouTube.

A wide range of upload formats are available, from WMV and MPEG to obscurities like Ogg.

OWL music search

This one is pretty spiffy. Search for music not by entering keywords, but by uploading your sound files. OWL will search their database for songs that are similar! You can see how this could be useful for remixers.

SpinXpress

All the content here is Creative Commons licensed. Search an incomplete database of CC content, from within Flickr, blip.tv and a number of other archives.

SpinXpress also has a ‘community’ element- users are encouraged to sign up and collaborate with others uploading to the service.

Now that you know all about Creative Commons, why not submit your images and photos to the MakeUseOf Flickr photo group?

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• What are you lookin’ at? Cool Sites To Feed Your Photo Fetish (8)
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The utility of the software is not difficult to imagine. Finding a single photo, perhaps the one where you were wearing your favorite tuxedo, among the thousands in your collection would take up a considerable part of your day. With Photology photo search and its use of innovative filters, you can narrow down on the probables and knock off a few hands of the clock.

The program’s slogan says – No tags, No folders. It just knows. That’s a sweet sound for someone who has a huge collection of photos, but is thoroughly disorganized about it.

Find the Photo…

The software canvasses photos by using its special content filters. It mimics our own behavior in the way we tend to remember a snapshot. Not by filenames but by the other vague details. We can search through thousands of photos within seconds using the following seven filters –

1. Time of day: Was it morning, afternoon, evening or night?
2. Date: Nail it by the month and year.
3. Features: Was it black/white, under-exposed, over-exposed, in focus, out of focus or in monotones?
4. Location: Was it an outdoor shot or an indoor one?
5. Content: Was it about people, plants, the ocean or the sky?
6. Text: Perhaps a hint of a filename/folder name or tag to search it by?
7. Color: Narrow down the choices by searching for a particular color using the color wheel.

The seven filters can be used alone or combined to get to the photo we want. The filters get stacked up on selection on the right hand side bar and can also be cleared if the results are not to the mark.

The Rest of the Software…

Photology has a smooth and clean user interface. Understanding the software is a no-brainer because the icons are easily evident and intuitive. Once installed, Photology lets us select the folders to monitor for photos. Once done with the selection, Photology takes a brief while to scan through the photos. A status window lets us know the progress as the software runs through our collection.

The interface has three areas. The left side is for the search filters. The large central area is taken up by a 5×4 array of thumbnails and the right side column by the current search filters. Hovering our mouse over the thumbnail gives us four more options to use for an image – show in order (view with others taken around the same time), rotate (orient an image), add to group (select and add to a group for sorting) and delete.

Click on a thumbnail and one can view the maximized picture with some added options. View the default file name and the date of creation. We can enter a caption for the photo to better describe it. The added options include:

Group – These are collections of similarly themed pictures we can create for ourselves. Put a single photo in as many groups as you want without making multiple copies.
Share – Easily share photos via an email link, Flickr, Picasa or SmugMug. We can also collect selected photos into a desktop folder for sharing through the ‘file’ share option.
Print – Print your photos directly from Photology.
Wallpaper – Use any photo as desktop wallpaper.
Adjust – Four basic operations like color, red eye, rotate and crop are given.
Delete – Don’t like the photo?  Send it to the recycle bin.

The Final Results

After taking the software through a bunch of wallpapers mixed with another bunch of personal photos, the results weren’t picture perfect though not disappointing too. The more technically logical filters like ‘Features’, ‘Color’, ‘Date’ and ‘Text’ returned fairly accurate results with a few errors. Their abstract counterparts like ‘Location’ and ‘Content’ returned a wider variety of inaccurate results. Though, I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the ‘Faces’ component in the ‘Content’ filter. The ‘Time of Day’ filter gave me the most heartburn.

So why would I recommend this software?

It would be a fallacy to expect the moon from the abstract filters though it had its good share of hits (with the misses of course!). The combination of filters does give me another way to wade through my haphazard mass of untagged photos. Though, I wish they would add some multiple image handling capabilities especially related to naming and tagging so I can compensate for some of my previous laziness.

For its smooth, slick and simple interface, its potential and its zero price, Photology is worth its 12MB download.

Photology is compatible with Windows XP and Vista. Essential requirement: Microsoft .Net 3.0 Framework.

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This post has two goals in mind: first, it lists a few interesting sources, some that offer photographs that are simply beautiful or quirky, while others are pertinent to events or offer cultural insights. The second goal is to challenge the reader to share with others their finds, ranging from the obvious to the under-appreciated.

Before we proceed, a word of caution: while the sites mentioned here are both interesting and artistic, be warned that not all the content on them may be safe for work.

Flickr’s “Last 7 Days Interesting” Set

It would be sacrilege to speak of photography on the internet without mentioning Flickr, and some might contend (though I do not) that the list can even end right here. The above is a screenshot of Flickr’s page of interesting pictures from the last 7 days. The page can be refreshed to display different subsets of photographs that are almost all reliably worthy of viewing.

Alternative ways to explore Flickr include Flickr Groups, or any of a number of Flickr content showcase sites like FlickRiver, an AIR application called DestroyFlickr (don’t let the name scare you, the authors intent is anything but!), RSS feeds from Flourish (Flickr offers its own RSS feeds, of course), or a Flickr widget from WidgetBox.

Other sites, such as Photo-Eye offer sumptuous visual galleries of professional and artistic photography that are well worth your time.

DeviantART

DeviantART is an old (and favourite) name for chronic wallpaper hunters and admirers of digital art. Also available from this “community of artists” are collections of impressive photographs that are categorised into Still Life, Street, Humorous and other sections.

The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture

A few times each month the Boston Globe presents in its “The Big Picture” web pages, collections of some of the most amazing photographs that range from natural wonders to political events. The page includes an RSS feed, a comments section, and archives are also available.

Views of the News

Sure you scoffed at “the MSM” (MainStream Media, for the uninitiated) during the US election season, but now that that’s all settled, you can quietly return to their online offerings, since many of their websites offer interesting multimedia, including slideshows that provide a pictographic equivalent of current events and news.

The New York Times multimedia page includes photo slideshows, interactive features, audio slide shows, and a Pictures of the Day section.

The German newspaper Spiegel provides a section called “Picture This” (clever!?) updated daily with interesting pictures, typically from Europe.

Time Magazine’s website includes a Photo Essays section that includes sections similar to other such sites, sorting pictures by day, week and year. Also of interest is their “Graphics” section with, well you might have guessed it, graphics highlighting various bits of data (e.g: 5 Truths About Health Care in America). One recent Photo Essay offers a haunting look at The Remains of Detroit.

The BBC gets in on the act with their In Pictures offering the now familiar temporal categories, as well as Audio Slideshows and user contributed content.

Its brethren, the Times Online (broken down by region and kind) and The Guardian (including this cheerful Flickr set that documents the recession) too offer similar photo galleries.

And then there’s Tumblr and Google Maps Sightings

In the last two years, the micro-blogging (or perhaps more accurately, tumblelog) site Tumblr has attracted photography and picture buffs whose posts include their own snapshots as well as interesting pictures found elsewhere. One contributor you will find infinitely resourceful in teasing out the most intriguing and amusing pictures from the nooks and crannies of the internet as well as the real world is Szymon Błaszczyk, author of the Inspire me, now! blog:

So… what are you lookin’ at?    What online photo sources feed your fetish?

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However, Google’s implementation of their product, although usable, feels very clunky and can be extremely cumbersome, combing through hundreds of thousands of images. Fortunately it seems like there is always another way with technology.

A strangely titled website called ‘Dear Computer’, takes the incredibly large index of Google Images and simply displays images only, nothing else. They have titled it ‘Google Image Ripper‘, and what it does is it removes the long drawn out process of individually clicking images through Google’s annoying search, and displays the file in its entirety.

Here is a comparison look:

Google’s Default Image Search of MakeUseOf:

Dear Computer’s Google Image Rip of MakeUseOf:

As you can see after submitting a search, you get many more images and a much easier interface, than you ever would with Google’s version. Once the images are displayed, you then have the ability to simply right-click on the file right from the screen, for easy saving and storage.

Along with the quick search and save feature, you also have some additional options to choose from while searching. You still have the option of choosing between sizes (small, medium, large and extra large) but also an additional ‘icon’ option as well.

Now let’s take a look at the search box. Here is where you can select your image size, safe content option or even look for ‘faces only’.

Along with the website, I have incorporated Firefox’s built-in keyword searching as well. If you bookmark this link- Google Image Ripper – you can simply type ‘im insert image name here‘ and you’ll quickly see Image Ripper’s display of images.

There isn’t much else to this web app, but I find myself using it on almost a daily basis, particularly for icons and smaller images. It also comes in handy when you would like screen shots of a particular application for a blog posting or software review. You may not find a use for it yourself, but just try it out anyway. It’s incredibly fast and of course free to use.

Do you know of any similar online products?

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• Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs (37)
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Some of these images date back as far as 1750 and others are as recent as the 2000’s. You may browse through photos grouped by people (FDR), places (Taj Mahal), events (the Kentucky Derby), sports, or any cultural keyword you can think of.

For example, here’s a word that’s been thrown around lately: “depression.” Type that in to find photos from the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  You can start from http://images.google.com/hosted/life or simply add “source:life” to the search box on any Google Image Search page. Framed copies of any photo you find are available for purchase.

Other Image Collections

It should be noted that Life’s sister publication, Time, also has an extensive (but not yet Googleized) photo archive dating back to 1999. It can be found on the Time homepage, but here’s a direct link. You may also use the site’s search function, where photo essays will show up on the right sidebar.

National Geographic magazine offers thousands of beautiful stock photos at NationalGeographicStock which can be searched by keyword. You may also specify whether you want royalty-free images and/or images which may have their rights managed.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center has a collection of over 9000 press-release photos of America’s manned space program. More can be found here. Both can be searched by keyword.

America’s National Archive has but a fraction of its materials in its Archive Research Catalog. However that still amounts to over 140,000 digitized photographs and documents which can be searched by keyword, or leisurely browsed.

Rounding out our list, Image Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library has archives in several categories: Fine Arts, Chemistry, South Asian, or Shakespearean. Certain large images are only permitted for use on UPenn’s domain, however all images can be viewed from outside UPenn.

There’s some beautiful stuff and potential desktop wallpaper to be found in these collections. You may find some more wallpaper fodder via this February article by Tina.

Do you know of any other media treasure-troves?  Do you have any favorites?  How else can we use archives such as these? Let us know in the comments.

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Flickr advanced search allows for multiple search options: you can choose to search by tags or full text, media type (photos or videos or both); date, creative commons, etc.

The choice is really great but somehow using the built-in search platform is by far less exciting than taking advantage of numerous external tools that search Flickr creatively.

Search by color:

Flickr Color Selectr allows you to set color preferences by color picker or color properties.

Multicolr allows to mix up to 10 colors and selects images matching the chosen color palette.

Retrievr claims to search images by your “sketches” but all I managed to achieve was to find images by color:

Search by theme:

Tiltomo is an awesome “Flickr Playground” tool that lets you search by tag, color / texture and theme / subject. The service uses two test image databases, works fast and can be real fun to use.

Here is what the tool shows for theme based search for this image:

Search by tags:

PIMPAMPUM searches Flickr photos by tag and has a very easy-to-use flash-based interface: it will display photos in a string and show you the larger version once you click on it:

Findr performs image search by tag and also gives you the huge list of related tags to refine your search.

PiciShare is a Flickr search engine that lets you search by tags or full text; you can also limit the number of images per page and sort the results by relevance, date added or popularity.

Airtightinteractive.com tool displays the images based on your tag choice and also suggests more related tags:

Search by Creative Commons:

Compfight: besides tag-based search, the service lets you set the Creative Commons (’Off’, ‘Commercial’, ‘All’), Safe Search and “original photo” filters.

FlickrStorm allows to search by keyword and /or by Creative Commons. The tool also has a handy flash-based interface:

Search by username:

Interestingby.isaias.com.mx rates any username’s photos (I wasn’t able to define the popularity criteria though).

Search by location:

Flyr searches within geotagged photos and adds Google map link to each search result.

Geosnapper searches for US cities or zip codes and shows the place instantly on the map:

See random cool photos:

Photoree let’s you rate Flickr photos (for registered users) or just browse most popular photos chosen by other members.

Flickriver shows you most interesting photos added today / yesterday (the tool also lets you search by tags, username or group).

Girls on Flickr: shows you most popular girls’ photos sorted into the following categories:
pretty, beautiful, portrait, blonde, teens, black-white, sketch, hair, eyes, lips, hands, tattoos, glasses, skirts, shirts, jeans, shoes, uniform, celebrity, actress, model, super model, sports, fashion, cars, laptops, secondlife, interesting.

Which tools do you use to search Flickr? Are there any I missed out?

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• What are you lookin’ at? Cool Sites To Feed Your Photo Fetish (8)
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Let’s search the web for an autumn-like palette (yellow, red, brown) using the following 3 services. Let’s see how the search results are like.

1. PicItUp

PicItUp is a visual image search engine that combines word-based with color based search.

Test it: search for [autumn] and choose any color from the left column (I chose yellow). Now let’s look at the results:

Impressive, isn’t it?

What the tool lacks: you can’t combine several colors to refine your search (for example you can’t search for a yellow-red palette) – you are only able to search for one color.

2. Multicolr

Unlike the above one, with the Flickr-based Multicolr (already mentioned at Make Use Of) service you can combine as many colors as you want.

Test it: choose several colors and watch how the image list changes with each color added (I combined red and yellow):

What the tool lacks:you can’t combine word-based and color-based searches with this service. You are limited with playing with colors only.

3. Etsy

Etsy, an online shop of handmade products, has developed color search for their own product database.

Test it: It’s real fun to play with. Just browse your mouse across the screen and watch various colors and same-palette products pop up.

What the tool lacks: here you are unable to either set the color option or the search term. Nonetheless the tool is such fun to use that you definitely need to try it out.

Now, what do you think could be possible practical applications for these tools?

Would you use them on a regular basis or are they just for fun?

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You are probably saying, “Oh, but there is Google image search for me. Why would I need another one?”. But TinEye is an entirely different kind of image search. While Google image search uses text to search for associated images, TinEye uses an image as a query for searching. Google can’t do that – at least, not yet.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s a quick video explanation from Idée on how TinEye works. Or read on for my explanation.

To search using TinEye, you can either enter a URL to a image on the web or upload an image from your computer. Another way is to install the TinEye browser plugin for Firefox or Internet Explorer. With the plugin installed, you can right click on any web image to search for it using TinEye.

Just like Google indexes all the web pages it crawls, TinEye creates a digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ of the images using sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms. Once you query using an image, TinEye instantly analyzes and compares the ‘fingerprint’ of your query image with the images in its search index.

TinEye not only finds identical images but also the modified versions of the image. As long as the images are alterations of the same query image, TinEye can find them and include them in your search results. But, do remember that TinEye does not actually ’see’ the image, in the sense that if you upload the image of a dog, it does not see it as a ‘dog’ and fetches you images of other dogs. It only finds if the same image has been used, even if altered or modified. TinEye orders the results by most similarities, meaning that altered images are found towards the end of the search.

So if you take the example of the Mona Lisa :

TinEye will return results such as these :

Now that we have seen what TinEye can do, let’s see what you can do with TinEye. Here are some of the possible uses of TinEye.

• Suppose you see a photo and would like to have some more information about it. Finding out where else the photo has been used could give you more information about it.
• If you have posted an interesting photo captured by you on your blog, it would be great to know where else the photo has been used.
• There could be another side to the previous scenario. You could use TinEye to track if any of your copyrighted images are being used elsewhere.
• Professional photographers and illustrators can find out where and how their creations are being used.
• If you have a low resolution image but need a higher resolution image, TinEye could be of great use.
• If you have a brandname or logo you can use TinEye to see how it’s being used.

I am sure you can think of even more uses for TinEye. If you do, please put your ideas in the comments.

As of writing this post, TinEye has over 586 million images indexed, which is actually a small number considering the size of the web. But TinEye crawls new images on the web on a regular basis and the number of indexed images is constantly growing. So this is gearing up to be an amazing website and you have to wonder when Google will have technology like this?

TinEye is currently in private beta but the company has generously given Make Use Of 1000 pre-approved invites to give away to our readers! They’ve told us you just have to click on this link and you should be on your way to getting set up! Then come back and let us know in the comments what you think!

(By) Suresh Chandren, a computer and internet junkie who loves blogging. He blogs about computers, software and productivity at Digital Quest.

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• The Best 3 Tools to Search for Images Online by Color (26)
• 5 Good Image Search Engines Apart From Google Image Search (39)
• What are you lookin’ at? Cool Sites To Feed Your Photo Fetish (8)
• Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs (37)
• Google Image Ripper – Remove Thumbnails From Image Search (5)